Oranges and Lemons
by Lassroyale
Summary: The Intersect breaks him down. It makes the familiar strange. It makes Chuck a reflection that he can't recognize in the mirror. WARNINGS: Major character death, angst, mental instability


**Warnings:** angst, mental instability, WARNING: MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH

**A/N:** Don't worry, this won't be some multi-chapter that I take forever to write. Not that I ever do that…::cough cough::. ;) I've been dying to use the _Oranges and Lemons_ rhyme for some time now, just as I've been interested in exploring the idea of the Intersect as a force that degrades Chuck's mind. I hope you guys enjoy it!

**Oranges and Lemons - part 1 of 2 **

**-VVV-**

The Intersect will eventually smother all traces of who he is; Chuck realized that from the beginning. Slowly, as time moves forward, he can feel vital parts of himself begin to become confused with things that he knows aren't his own - thoughts, memories, feelings that belong to someone else. It makes him feel like he's living inside of a borrowed body; there are days where he stares at his hands and doesn't recognize the calluses he finds there.

The worst of it are the dreams, though.

He dreams in loops and replays, information stuttering through his mind in vivid pictures smeared brightly behind his eyelids. He dreams in snatches of the familiar and wide expanses of the unknown. He moves through darkness as if he's been intimate with it, acquainted so vitally that he feels it still curled in him, touching him from deep inside. Always, he runs: Away, away, _away_.

And in his dreams he wears his own skin like a stranger's coat.

**-VVV-**

Wind sweeps along a country road that winds like a muddy brown river into the horizon. It looks like it has just rained; the air is thick with the aftertaste of a storm. Chuck is barefoot and his feet are sunk deep into the muck, soft and cold between his toes.

He feels afraid; the fear crawls along his skin, hot and damp.

So he's dreaming then.

There's movement on the road behind him and he looks up, knowing whom he'll see. This is a new nightmare, a recent one that breathes with balmy breath against the back of his neck. Chuck looks down the path and feels something knot within him, and it clenches like a fist in his throat. He begins to shake. He begins to run.

Casey walks along the winding path, head bowed, clothed in his military uniform. His shoes, usually pristine black, are splattered with mud and something else, something darker. It looks dull red beneath the sun.

Chuck nearly trips in his haste to get away, bare feet sinking deep into the mud. Worms squish between his toes; the muck sucks at his ankles, slurping at his shins with wet, squelching noises. Then Casey begins to chase him and Chuck tastes fear beneath his tongue. Today, fear has the sweet tang of over-ripe oranges. When Chuck starts to sink further, pulled deep down into the mud and earth, his panic rises.

Behind him, his voice looming ever closer, Casey begins to speak, chanting in a singsong pattern with a voice that doesn't belong to him.

"Oranges and lemons,  
Say the Bells of St. Clements."

Mud slurps at Chuck's knees as he struggles to get farther away from the other man. Sweat beads at his brow as he strains to move. His body feels heavy; it takes effort to force one leg in front of the other. He twists and looks over his shoulder – Casey is gaining ground.

"You owe me five farthings,  
Say the Bells of St. Martin's."

Casey's voice is dead and flat. His words travel on shards of broken glass. The sound drags down Chuck's back like claws across a chalkboard, raising the hair on his arms. He struggles on, but by then, he's sunken into the mud to the waist.

Casey's shadow falls across him and it chokes him, as suffocating as a wool blanket on a summer's day. He fights to remember how to breathe. Chuck doesn't recall Casey coming to stand in front of him, but when he looks up, he's there. He suppresses his shudder of revulsion.

Casey stares down at him with rheumy blue eyes, no evidence of a pupil behind the milky white film. His mouth is sewn shut with red thread. There's a gaping hole where his heart should be, open and oozing something Chuck can barely call blood. It's too thick, too sludge-like…too black.

Casey squats down in front of him. His mouth cracks open, pulls the skin around his lips taut. The corners of his mouth crease and tear with a horrible ripping noise that makes Chuck feel queasy.

"When will you pay me?  
Say the Bells of St. Bailey's"

Chuck squeezes his eyes shut when Casey reaches out and rests a dry palm against the curve of his cheek. The agent leans forward; his breath is moist with the hot aftertaste of cheap whiskey. The air hums with electricity, like a storm was gathering just beyond the slope of Casey's shoulders. Chuck feels his skin prickle. He opens his eyes: Casey is staring at him with an expectant air.

Chuck's tongue is thick in his mouth. His words are clumsy and rushed as he replies. "When I get rich, Say the Bells of Shoreditch."

Casey's face contorts; the edges of his mouth twitch painfully upwards. Skin rends further apart. It's too gruesome for Chuck to consider it a smile.

"When will that be?  
Say the Bells of Stepney."

Chuck flinches away when Casey places his other hand beneath his chin. His fingers spread over his jaw, dry like the rasp of sandpaper across his skin. Casey's other thumb strokes along the line of his cheekbone, gentle and careful. Chuck's eyes blur with tears. "Casey, buddy, _please_," he says. He knows this is a dream – knows it by the way his arms feel detached from his body when he reaches out and clutches the front of Casey's shirt. He stares at the backs of his hands for a minute; they're shaking. He doesn't recognize them.

It's all too real.

Chuck has a flash of a woman with brown hair and blue eyes, and perfect and dazzling smile. There's a sense of comfort in her. A feeling of home is in the notes of her laugh. Chuck has no idea who she is.

"Please," he says again.

Casey's only reply is: "When will that be? Say the Bells of Stepney."

His fingers close reflexively around Casey's shirt when the other man leans even closer to brush his lips against Chuck's brow. It's tender. It's like a benediction. He feels the air push in at him from all sides as Casey lifts him up and out of the mud; the muck grabs at his legs like the hands of a jealous lover. There is grime and dried flakes of mud caked beneath his toenails and in between his toes. . Otherwise, Chuck's pants are inexplicably clean, as is the rest of him.

Casey pulls Chuck against him; he smells like something old and stale, like vacant space in an abandoned home. He wants to pull away as much as he wants to lose himself in the feel of him – of Casey.

"I do not know, Say the Great Bells of Bow." Chuck chokes out the words on a hiccupping breath. He places a hand over the yawning hole in Casey's chest, feels the too-black blood ooze over his fingers.

Chuck looks to his left: They are no longer on the muddy road. He's in a room and he's on his knees, without explanation or recollection of how he got there. There is tile on the floor and the air is cool and damp. He shivers.

Casey is sitting on a metal folding chair in front of him. Chuck struggles to lift his head and look at him; it feels so heavy on his neck. He manages, catches a glimpse of Casey through the fringe of his lashes as the big man tilts forward and begins to unstitch the red thread into his lips.

When it's done, when Casey's mouth is nothing but a torn gash of shredded skin and bits of thread, Chuck watches in horror as the other man's teeth begin to fall out. Casey tries to catch them, presses a hand to his mouth to hold them in, but he can't and they fall to the floor in front of Chuck with a series of nauseating clatters.

Casey stands up, and in the next second the agent is poised behind him with a gun pressed to the back of Chuck's skull. Chuck closes his eyes, lets his shoulders slump. All at once, he's just so tired, the fear draining out of him as quickly and as forcefully as a riptide. He sags forward.

When Casey speaks, his voice spills out impossible and awful - a formless sound bleeding from ruined lips. Chuck however, doesn't need to hear the words - he knows them by heart.

"Here comes the Candle to light you to Bed,  
Here comes the Chopper to Chop off your Head."

There's a click as Casey thumbs off the safety. Chuck's heart stops beating. Something flashes in the stale air before him: a memory, maybe, someone else's or his – he doesn't know, doesn't know – of two men pressed close, hands on hips, fingers loosely tangled. Both are relaxed, almost slouching as they move languidly to music that Chuck can't hear. There's a snatch of laughter, the hint of a whispered word, and then the image fades, slipping away like a kite caught by the wind. Slipping away: just another thing – another memory - that Chuck can almost grasp but can't seem to catch and hold onto.

A smile is on his lips and the snippet of a waltz is in his ears, when Casey pulls the trigger and paints the tile pulpy red with his blood and brain matter.

"Chip chop chip chop – The Last Man is Dead."

**-VVV-**

Chuck wakes thrashing, screaming, every inch of his body covered in a sheet of sweat. There's a body on top of him, knees on either side of his hips, pinning him. Hands are on his shoulders, on his chest, in his hair, pushing him down into the bed; holding him still. A voice growls down from somewhere above him: Chuck doesn't recognize it at first.

He fights harder.

"Goddamnit, snap out of it Bartowski!" He fights, he fights, he fights – he has to fight, has to hold on, has to – "Chuck, stop it, it's _me_."

The hands move to gather him close, and suddenly Chuck is being crushed against a broad, hard chest. The shirt against his face smells like detergent, clean and vaguely lemony. He inhales deeply, smells soap and something else beneath it all; recognition suddenly filters through his brain.

"Casey." Chuck says the word in a rush of breath, clinging now instead of pushing away. The fight leaves him; his muscles relax as the terror begins to recede, curling away and leaving him feeling curiously empty. "Casey," he says again, an affirmation - a consolation. He's real and solid against Chuck's body and he tilts his head and rests it tiredly against the agent's shoulder.

Eventually, Chuck shifts and pulls back, draws in a shaky breath. Casey thumbs the deep bruises beneath Chuck's eyes, his face grim in the darkness of the bedroom. "Your nightmares have been getting worse," he says. His voice is deep and tight with layers of concern. It sounds nothing like dream Casey's voice, all lilting phrases and shapeless noise.

Chuck nods and manages a smile. Casey doesn't return it; there's something haunting the corners of his eyes and lurking in the tense set of his mouth. "It'll be fine," says Chuck as reassuringly as he can – his voice sounds braver than he feels, but he knows Casey isn't fooled. He gets up and goes to the bathroom to avoid Casey's probing stare; to avoid the unspoken in Casey's rigid jaw: _It wasn't fine._ He was getting worse and the Intersect was turning him into a diminished version of himself, something strung together by data code and nerve endings and a brain that is constantly misfiring.

**-VVV-**

Chuck stares at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He leans heavily over the sink; the faucet runs cold water over his hands as he absently rubs them together. He splashes some water on his face and blinks into the mirror. His hands fall to his sides and he tries to quell his panic by digging his fingernails into his palms.

For a moment, he doesn't know who's staring back at him.

It passes quickly: Chuck blinks again and he's looking at his same old self, albeit with shadows both in and under his eyes.

It passes quickly, but it's enough to tell him how very not okay he is.

Chuck lurches to the toilet and barely manages to flip the seat up before he's vomiting into the bowl – his stomach is empty and he hasn't eaten properly for a few days now. The bile burns his throat and tears sting hot behind his eyes.

**-VVV-**

Casey watches Chuck move like a wraith towards the bathroom, immediately noticing the other man's missing warmth as soon as it's gone. He curls his lip against the sourness in his stomach when he notes that Chuck looks skinny, like he's lost a little too much weight. The idiot hadn't been eating right for quite some time now – he'd all but stopped eating in the last week or so.

_'It's probably the nightmares,'_ Casey thinks, and scrubs his hands over his face wearily. Every night for the last few weeks it had been the same: Chuck would go to bed curled against Casey's side and wake up screaming, terrified out of his mind. But it wasn't necessarily the thrashing or the screaming that Casey couldn't handle. No, it was lack of recognition, the way Chuck would sometimes wake up and look at him as if he were a stranger.

It made him sick to think that Chuck might wake up one day and have no idea who Casey was, or worse, that he would have no idea who _he_ was.

Casey sees the lack of recognition in Chuck's eyes sometimes, sees how he looks at everyday things like maybe he's forgotten what they are. He sees him look at Morgan the same way, hell, he sees him look at _Ellie_ the same way. It wouldn't be long until Chuck was a stranger in his own life.

Casey reaches behind the headboard to the gun he keeps there. He thumbs the safety, clicks it off and then back on.

The kill order came in weeks ago. Chuck's a liability: All of that precious information stuck inside a degenerating mind. Casey _does_ want to kill something, but that something is not Chuck. He's given him time, yanked him from work and forced him to have an extended vacation. He's moved him in with him, living the domestic life he's always been denied and secretly craves. It should've been good.

It is anything but.

Casey places the gun back in its hiding spot when he hears Chuck throwing up in the bathroom. Turning, he goes to check on him. .

(To be continued…)


End file.
